Public restrooms have become an unexpected source of controversy in the United States as experts argue over how the ever-essential destination can avoid discriminating by class or sex.
”In the US, but also in many other parts of the world — including India … issues having to do with human waste are taboo from public discussion. It is a last frontier,” said Harvey Molotch, a professor of cultural analysis at New York University (NYU).
At a conference in New York organised by NYU and the New York Architecture Centre, architects, sociologists, designers, activists, health officials and city leaders gathered on Saturday to discuss how the restrooms of the future might be overhauled, and debate the potential civic and social effects.
The conference also saw the premiere of the film Q2P, written and directed by India’s Paromita Vohra.
The documentary, filmed in Bombay, with its title an abbreviation of ”queue to pee”, takes a long look at public facilities. In 55 minutes, it shows who uses public restrooms and who does not, with sexual, social and even caste nuances.
The conference, Outing the Water Closet, according to NYU, aimed to reconsider and rebuild the public restroom.
Parallel to the gathering in New York, about 170 delegates from dozens of countries were attending in India another international conference on access to bathrooms.
Non-governmental groups such as the German Toilet Organisation were to press their campaign for a universal right to clean lavatories, especially for women.
”Access to appropriate sanitation is a human right,” read one of the group’s slogans. ”It’s time to break the ‘toilet taboo’.”
”This silence disables everyone to some degree, but particularly certain groups — women most clearly,” Molotch said of the taboos on discussing the issue in some countries. ”They have to wait in long lines, deal with unsanitary conditions. In some places and times, their presence is simply not recognised … They either have to ‘hold it in’ or not appear in public at all.”
The United Nations has declared 2008 the international year of hygiene.
New York is a notable case study for the architects’ conference. Many bathrooms in public venues such as discos have unisex toilets or shared areas for hand-washing.
The trend is not universally accepted, however.
”Some women do not want to share with men because they regard men as dirty,” said Molotch, adding: ”In part because their pee splatters, in part because they are regarded as socially less considerate of the next user. Maybe true, maybe not.”
Some, meanwhile, may still cling to the restroom as an oasis of single-gendered privacy, for chatting, putting on make-up or other pursuits.
Public toilets in the US typically have open seams in the partitions with big openings above and below — a feature that slid into sharp public view in September in a sex scandal involving US Senator Larry Craig.
Craig resigned after pleading guilty in a sex sting in an airport bathroom. A police officer arrested him, alleging that Craig invited a sexual encounter by sliding his foot and making signs under the toilet-cubicle partition.
An important question in toilet design is ”how to balance surveillance with privacy”, said Molotch. ”Should the system be organised to prevent men from having sex with each other?”
In another case, a lesbian sued a New York restaurant that threw her out of the bathroom after another woman customer complained, mistaking her for a man.
Then there is the question of equal access.
”Having non-gendered restrooms — which are usually single-user — enables transgendered people to avoid the discrimination and harassment that they face in men’s rooms and women’s rooms,” said Pauline Park, an activist for transgender rights.
Public toilets should be structured ”to make them genuinely accommodating for all people”, including those who have changed their sex, she said.
”Making public policy — and configuring restrooms — to make such facilities more accommodating to transgendered and gender-variant people helps make them more accommodating to non-transgendered people as well, including people with disabilities and families with young children.” — AFP
